Religionsethnologie: Religious Diversity in Transnational Context

This site provides an overview of the various research activities that I have initiated and supervised in the field of “religious diversity in transnational context” at FU Berlin. Much of my current research is oriented towards the exploration of religious diversity in Eastern African cities (see below), but I am equally interested in the way religious practice and organization have been affected and transformed by processes of globalization in rural and urban places in other parts of Africa and beyond. The main focus of my ongoing work on religion is on “new” Muslim and Christian organizations, but I am also concerned with the reconfiguration of ritual and “traditional” religious practice (including aspects of religious healing) in an interconnected world. In the following, you will find a summary of my current book project as well as information on research collaborations and conferences, ongoing PhD supervision and select publications and conference presentations.

Book project: “Religion, Education and the (Transnational) State: Unequal Histories and Subject Formation in Christian and Muslim Schools in Dar es Salaam”

My current book project on “Religion, Education and the (Transnational) State” has developed from my longstanding research interest in religion, HIV/AIDS and community-building in urban Tanzania (see publications below) and explores how the city of Dar es Salaam has become a site of religious vitality and trans-secular engagement in the wake of economic and political liberalization and transnational development.By drawing on critical approaches to the study of inter-religious relations, development and neoliberal reform processes, the manuscript examines whether and how religious actors’ involvement in the field of higher education have led to a re-positioning of “faith” and “religion” in the context of wider society and politics in Tanzania; and how this re-positioning correlates not only with longstanding histories of religious engagements in the field of education, but also with current global discourses and financial politics which have come to shape the field of “faith-based development” in Eastern Africa. The project considers also how the growing presence of faith-oriented education has been shaped by the increasing politicization of Christian-Muslim relations in the country, as well as by the potentials for social exclusion and conflict in the highly diverse and increasingly stratified (religious) urban landscapes of Eastern Africa. Finally, the project adopts an actor-centered approach and explores how these larger social, economic and political processes have become entrenched in individual and collective biographies; and how students, teachers and families understand and negotiate “faith” and “religion” in the context of newly established religious schools in Dar es Salaam.

Methodologically, the project relies on extended periods of field work in Dar es Salaam (2006-10) which include interviews and conversations with representatives of ministries and development organizations, as well as semi-structured and biographical interviews with students, family members and the staff of Christian and Muslim schools. Extended participant observation was conducted in six faith-oriented schools (Pentecostal, Muslim and Catholic), focusing on the interactions between staff, students, and families and the presence of “faith” and “religion” in the everyday workings of higher education institutions. A detailed mapping of specific organizations’ institutional histories and their entanglements with religious as well as non-religious actors within and outside of Dar es Salaam was undertaken. Finally, the project relies on secondary and archival literature, as well as the analysis of articles in major Kiswahili newspapers and the collection of statistical data and policy documents. Research stays in Dar es Salaam in 2008 and 2009 were partially funded by Freie Universität Berlin, Department for Political and Social Sciences. A previous research trip in 2006 was funded by the University of Florida.

2001. "‘Living PositHIVely in Tanzania’. The Global Dynamics of AIDS and the Meaning of Religion for International and Local AIDS Work.” In: afrika spectrum, 36 (1) 2001, Special issue ‘AIDS in Africa. Broadening the Perspectives’: 73-90

2008. "Religion, the Virtue-Ethics of Development andthe Transnationalization of Health Politics in Neoliberal Tanzania”.Workshop "Regimes of care, relations of care: anthropological perspectives on the changing order of public health in Africa"; University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology and African Studies Centre: 7. Juni 2008.

2008. “Tradition in Disguise: The Politics and Science of Religious Healing in Urban Tanzania”. Workshop “Religious Engagements with Disease Past and Present”; University of Copenhagen: 28.-29. April 2008.